The Gift of Understanding (Deuteronomy 29:4)

But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.
– Deuteronomy 29:4

Isn’t that an interesting verse? Moses is in the middle of telling God’s people about all that they have seen, all that they’ve heard, and all that they’ve experienced. But then he says in verse four, “To this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.”

Deuteronomy 29:4 teaches us about our need for God’s grace to understand.

Now, we could talk a long time about exactly all that this means, but what I want to just lead us to pray according to today is the reality that we only have a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear if God gives us that. We need God’s grace to understand who he is and who we are and how to live, and we need God’s grace to see rightly.

We need God’s grace to hear. In other words, we’re dependent on God for everything that’s good, including even understanding what is good, which drives us to pray, doesn’t it? This is the heart of prayer. We have nothing good apart from God, and so we pray in desperation to God for his help, even when we open up God’s Word.

I just want to encourage you, before you read God’s Word, to pray, “God open my eyes.” This is the prayer of Psalm 119: “That I may see wonderful things in your law.” God, I need your help to understand your Word. We can’t understand God’s Word, we can’t see who God is and hear how to experience full eternal life today and forever apart from God’s help to do so. And the beauty is that God is ready to do so. God wants to do so as we turn to him and look to him and seek him with humble hearts; he does not turn away the humble who seek him.

Deuteronomy 29:4 invites us to humble ourselves before God.

So we pray, God help us, help us. We need spiritual understanding. God, left to ourselves, we realize, we confess in this moment, left to ourselves, we are hopeless. We can’t understand what is true or right. We can’t see correctly, accurately, God, our vision will be blurred, our understanding marred apart from your help.

So God, we pray for your help in our lives today. God, help us to understand who you are, to understand who we are, to see who you are and all that you are doing in our lives, in the world around us. Lord, help us to see and understand what matters most. God, help us to understand how you’ve called us to live today, to experience life to the full in you. God, we humble ourselves before you, we need you. We need your grace, your mercy. We need your Spirit to open our eyes, as we read your Word, as we walk through our day today in this world.

God, we pray for spiritual sight and spiritual ears, and spiritual understanding and spiritual sensitivity. Lord, help us to live with sensitivity to your Spirit today, leading us, guiding us, teaching us, molding us more into your image. God, help us not to live in the flesh today. Oh God, help us to live in the fullness of your Spirit, with the spiritual sight and hearing and understanding that only comes from you.

This verse encourages us to pray for spiritual understanding.

And God, even as we pray this in our own lives, we pray this for others’ lives around us. God, we pray especially for people in our lives, family members, friends who don’t know you. Lord, please, we intercede for them now. Please grant them spiritual understanding, spiritual sight, and spiritual ears to hear. God, please help them to see who you are and how much you love them. God, we pray you would open their eyes to your glory in Jesus.

Please, God, save them from their sins. Do this work in their hearts. Give them hearts to understand how much you love them. God, we pray for that for them, we pray for that for peoples around the world.

Prayer for the Jogi People

Lord, we pray specifically today for the Jogi people of South Asia. God, for 4 million of them, mainly in India and then spread out in other countries. God, for 4 million people, open their eyes to see the glory of Jesus. We pray that you would cause the gospel to spread to them through your church, through our lives, and through our resources.

And God, we pray that you would give them spiritual sight to see your glory as the one true God, not all these other Hindu gods, that they would see your glory as the one true God, and they would trust in you, Jesus, as the Savior of their sins. God, we pray that over the Jogi people. Even as we pray for increased spiritual understanding today in our lives, help us to see and hear and understand according to your Spirit and your Word in Deuteronomy 29:4. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.